The True Destruction of America : Must-See TV

[Doggystylin]

i suggest you read all this, its really interesting

The True Destruction of America : Must-See TV

I'm going to tell you something right now that, hopefully, will startle and disgust you. More people voted for a winner in the American Idol TV series finale than voted in last week's US Government elections. Can you believe that? More people in the USA cared about who won a song contest on some tired reality TV show than who is going to represent them in government for the next four years. It's official, America is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave - as of now it's the land of the sheep and home of the retarded. And it's only going to get worse...

On the same day I heard this news, I also heard a TV news journalist refer to how one member of the US Government "dissed" another. I couldn't believe my ears. Here, on CNN, was a supposedly learned news reporter telling me someone was "dissed".

I shouldn't be entirely surprised, since this is the same news network that has actively and unquesitonably participated in one of the most heinous abuses of the English language of the last hundred years - the insistance that the USA is fighting 'the war on terror'. Apparently, if the US media is to be believed, it's possible to stage a war against an emotion.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, your nation is fighting a war against terrorists and terrorism - not terror. It's about as possible to fight a war on 'terror' as it is to fight a war on 'sad' or 'excited' or 'horny'. 'Terror' is the result of TERRORISM exacted by TERRORISTS. This means your nations is fighting a WAR AGAINST TERRORISM, not 'a war on terror'. Just because your President is an idiot, and your media is too scared to correct him, doesn't mean you should allow his mistakes to make it into popular acceptance.

But getting back on track, what does it say about America today that more people feel their lives are affected by who wins a pop contest than who will make their laws?

What does it say about America that Scooby Doo: The Movie made $153m at the box office?

What does it say about America that we all sit glued to our TV screens waiting to hear whether Winona Ryder will serve jail time for swiping a handbag or two, when thousands of people are starving to death as you read this in Africa?

What does it say about America that the government refuses to sign an 'anti-landmine treaty' that every other first and second world country on the planet has signed, and nobody talks about it in the press?

And, as pointed out so brilliantly by Michael Moore in his documentary, Bowling for Columbine, what does it say about America that there's over 11,000 gun deaths in the country every year, while Canada, which has a higher proportion of gun ownership per citizen than the US, has only 165?

Moore points specifically at the media as the party responsible for the rapid increase in violence, unemployment, illiteracy and poverty in America, not because they show violent movies and TV shows (we've been watching those since the 30's), but by using their news networks to continually instill a sense of fear and ignorance in the general public.

Moore points out, and he's damn right, that good news doesn't compell a person to sit glued to their screen, but bad news sure as heck does.

"Anthrax! Is it coming to your mailbox soon? Could your life be at risk? News at 11!"

Would you be more likely to watch that news program or the following?

"Animal extinction rate increases, Indian Tiger nearly lost forever, News at 11."

You know you're not going to give a damn about the Indian Tigers (are they a baseball team?) at all. You'll hear they're in trouble and assume there's nothing that can be done and you'll go watch a Friends re-run and try to forget that one of the grandest animals on the planet is about to become no more than a memory.

In the 80's, the news media told us in no uncertain terms that we were dying. They showed us the starving in Ethiopia and we rallied to the cause. They showed us the escalating arms race and how it was putting us all at great risk and we marched in the streets and made our politicians scale them back. In the 70's, we stopped the Vietnam war, in the 80's we stopped the whale slaughter and baby seal clubbing, and in the 90's we shamed all those people who wore real animal fur to the point where the fur industry was near death.

But somewhere along the line, the media found that being important and making the world a better place should take a step back and make room for sensationalism, reality TV and 'manufactured stars'. We traded in our Sixty Minutes exposes for Barbara Walters specials on how Gwyneth Paltrow can't find a date. We ditched our newsroom budgets so we could spend more money making sure Chandler comes back for another season of Friends. We stopped sending journalists out to break stories and started instead reading press releases on the air, verbatim.

Remember the pressure the media put the government under during the Vietnam War? The journalists were right in the thick of it, on the front lines, sticking cameras up out of foxholes to get first-hand footage of what was really going on. Nowadays, the government tells the press that they're not allowed into the country we're invading, and remarkably the press doesn't fight that, even accepting it gratefully.

The American free press is a joke right now. This very site broke a story not long ago of how our movie industry was defrauding the American public by putting fake customer testimonials onto websites, and in doing so we uncovered proof of widespread fraud, not just at one studio, but at many.

So we went to the Hollywood Reporter to break the story, since one of the allegations we uncovered was that they had themselves been sabotaged to the tune of over $100,000 worth of advertising as retribution by Twentieth Century Fox for running a negative review for Fight Club. According to inside reports that we obtained, Fox executives were furious that THR hadn't supported Fight Club and essentially boycotted the placement of any ads in the paper - ads which the paper relies on to survive.

When THR executives tried to smooth things over, our inside sources allege that Fox embarked on a campaign of 'lesson teaching', whereby ad designs were 'lost' at the zero hour, bookings were cancelled, payments were stalled and THR was shown in no uncertain terms that if they didn't play ball, they could be made to suffer.

When we took this to our sources at The Hollywood Reporter, they refused to talk about it. They didn't deny it, but they inferred to us that they had no interest in exposing Hollywood scams, especially when they involved their own paper.

That's the standard of journalism in this country right now - disinterest, broken promises, saving your own skin, sell papers -beyond all else, rate well.

It's come to our attention this past week that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the crew that runs the Emmy Awards, took on a deal for the awards to be televised by a network that had NOT made the highest bid. HBO made the highest bid for the awards, offering an amount of money far beyond what the networks were prepared to spend, in return for an eight year broadcast deal.

According to reports, while on the verge of agreeing to the rich HBO deal, the Academy was approached by a representative of the TV networks, CBS honcho Les Moonves, who made it very clear that if HBO were allowed to broadcast the Emmys, there would be network boycotts of the telecast, a refusal to provide clips from their shows, a ban on contracted talent from working on the award ceremony, and the creation of an awards special to compete against the Emmys, which would be broadcast on network TV.

In essence, the networks joined forces to deprive HBO of the chance to compete in the marketplace, as well as deprive the Academy of tens of millions of dollars in broadcast rights.

Of course, you won't hear about this on Network TV, nor will you probably read it in the newspaper, since so many newspapers are owned by companies with their hands in film and TV.

But surely if the Academy has been wronged they'll make a big deal about it, right? I mean, they've lost tens of millions of dollars here, surely they'll make sure they're heard, right?

Wrong. They're not saying a word. Could that be because the President of the Academy, Bryce Zabel, was hired by Les Moonves to write Black River Falls, a TV pilot for CBS? Surely not.

It's all going to hell, kids. CNN, once the bastion of TV journalism, now promotes their shows as having "a healthy dose of attitude", as it prepares to merge with ABC, after it had been swallowed up by AOL Time Warner not too long ago. Bravo TV was swallowed by NBC a few weeks ago for $1.25b. Before that they bought (or bought into) Telemundo, Valuevision, CNET - hell, they even bought into TiVo.

CBS is owned by Viacom, which also owns MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, and the Infinity Radio network, which own 180 radio stations across North America.

AOL Time Warner, which currently owns CNN but perhaps not for much longer, has the world's largest online portal - AOL - as well as the world's largest magazine publishing house, Time, and the Warner Bros movie studio and TV Network.

What does all this mean? It means that when eight balding white guys in suits sitting in New York decide that they don't want the Academy to take a contract with HBO, between them they can ensure that A) it doesn't happen, B) nobody hears about it, C) the guy who could make sure everybody hears about it is sufficiently busy writing a TV pilot to not bother talking.

It means American Idol matters more than the US congress. It means when Daniel Radcliffe appears in the upcoming Harry Potter movie, he can do press appearances for literally weeks without ever setting foot in a TV studio, press conference or online chat that isn't held in a building owned by AOL Time Warner. And when he's doing that, do you think it's likely that he's going to be asked any real journalistic questions?

We're being conned, folks. Eight balding white guys control everything we see, everything we hear, everything we wear, everything we do, and the only people who can stop them from doing that, the US government, are themselves so reliant on these people that they'd never risk doing it.

If you had an election coming up in two years, would YOU tell Rupert Murdoch that he has to break up his company? Would you tell Les Moonves that it isn't right that the Inifinity Radio Network plays music in 180 cities that all comes from one studio and one DJ? Would you tell AOL Time Warner that they can't swallow up another cable channel?

Of course you wouldn't. Besides, even if you did, Les Moonves would simply ask if you wanted to write a pilot, cut you a check and send you on the company jet to Vegas for a week...

[Suga Foot]

And, as pointed out so brilliantly by Michael Moore in his documentary, Bowling for Columbine, what does it say about America that there's over 11,000 gun deaths in the country every year, while Canada, which has a higher proportion of gun ownership per citizen than the US, has only 165?

 


That was a good read Doggy.  Thanks for posting it up.

[budsmokeronly]

thanks for posting that.  that shit is realer than real.

[H2O proof MC]

god damn that shit is so on point its not even funny.  By the way who wrote that and where was it from?  If I was a good writer I would have compiled all my thoughts in the exact same way.  For example.......just the other day I asked some of my co-workers who ariel sharon and Yasir Arafat were; and none of them fucken knew.  It was like I was a geek or something because I kept up with whats going on in the world.  This example just illustrates how clueless people actually are when it comes to politics.  Its the same reason why Bush's approval rating is so high, its because people have no idea what is going on around them.

[bLaDe]

Great read, props doggy, where did you get that article from?  Thats so very true, and like h20 said, no one around here knows shit about the world, its sad, peace

  -{bLaDe}

[infinite59]

I marched with 80,000 people last month in an anti-war demonstration in SanFransisco.  It was larger than even the Vietnam marches, but ofcourse the media didn't give the event mass exposure.

[King Tech Quadafi]

ahh Sag, good job